Happy 'R'
by Rose7
Summary: He loves me, he loves me not...is a Sith Lord by any other name still a Sith Lord? SW:KotOR one-shot


"Revan?"

Now_ you can say it_, she thought bitterly, ignoring him and continuing to pack her things.

Carth stood in the doorway, awkwardly rubbing his neck and obviously trying to decide how best to approach her.

"Isn't the silent treatment a little childish?"

"I'm not being silent. I just don't have anything else to say."

He walked towards her, pausing in front of where she was bent over her things, one hand in his pocket and the other behind his back.

"Revan, I'm sorry."

Katrina let herself pause for just a moment.

"You don't have to be sorry, Carth."

_Why should he be? He was just being honest. _

_The problem was that you didn't want to hear the truth even though you knew it all along._

She didn't know why she had let it upset her so much. She'd been called other names before. She'd heard 'Morgana' more times than she was willing to admit.

_It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, _she had repeated to herself_, I miss him and it's been so long so don't ruin it-_

But it wasn't the name of a long-dead wife. It wasn't the name of another woman he had loved.

He must have noticed her latent inactivity, how she merely clung to him like a frightened child rather than the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy.

"Katrina?" he said breathlessly. A bead of sweat had rolled off his dangling strand of hair, falling onto her forehead.

This was the name of a woman who had never existed at all.

"Gorgeous, what's wrong?" She had grasped his hand where it ran worriedly over her cheek.

"You still can't say it, can you?" She had been surprised at how easily her heart had stopped pounding; how swiftly her breathing had returned to normal.

Carth had pushed himself up on his elbows, staring at her. He didn't understand.

Katrina had briefly considered lying to him and telling him it was just another nightmare, another dream, so he could hold her and-

They were no longer nightmares or dreams. They were memories of things she had done; memories that had to be accepted along with the name.

The rest of the galaxy could never know she was Revan, unless she wanted to be shipped around endlessly from planet to planet, going on trial for war crimes, being condemned to death in every system.

But the man that supposedly loved her…she wanted him, at least, to call her by her real name.

She had wrapped the sheets around her and made a quick retreat towards the door.

"Revan," he had called out hesitantly, finally understanding. "Can you really blame me?"

She was silent, letting her fingers curl painfully around the doorframe. What had hurt the most; far more than any unkind word or brutal honesty:

The fact that, no, she _couldn't_ really blame him.

Carth cleared his throat, pulling his hand out from behind his back and holding something out to her.

Katrina eyed him warily, inspecting the small package sitting in his palm.

"What's this?"

"A present." She couldn't help smirking at his intentionally vague answer, opening it up and moving aside the layers of tissue paper.

Inside laid a bright green crystal. It couldn't have possibly been glowing, though it reflected off the insides of the box like it was pulsating with its own supply of power.

"For your lightsaber," Carth murmured. "It was looking a little washed out."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"You know how hard you are to shop for, beautiful?" he replied, laughing softly. "I had to get Dustil to help me, and believe me, he wasn't too happy about it."

It was easy to want to forgive him- to say that it didn't really matter, that she could live with it. Parts of her even felt guilty for asking this much of him when it was already asking enough to love her at all.

_But he doesn't love you, _she thought, sighing._ He loves Katrina._

"I'm not going to change my mind, Carth," she said, still holding the crystal between her hands, liking the warmth of it (unless that was just her own sweaty, nervous palms).

"I'm not trying to get you to. Or begging forgiveness."

"Then what is this for?"

Carth sighed, the awkwardness back in his hand, which alternated between rubbing his neck and resting on his hip. "I suppose I could lie to you and say it's to celebrate the day we proclaimed our love or some other engine grease like that, but I don't think I could lie to a Jedi and you wouldn't believe me anyways."

She tried only to think of Jedi matters- of her impending trip with Padawan Dustil to continue his training on a mission from the Council- not to think of the fact that it was around that time of year that the beaches on the Rakatan homeworld would be warm and sunny, that it was around the time of year that everything had changed.

"I thought…" Carth fumbled, and she could tell his prepared speech wasn't going as well as he thought it might. "I thought you might like something to, you know, remind you of the great thing you did that day."

"_You deserve to be the true Master of the Sith, not Malak. I see this now. Together we can destroy your old apprentice. Join with me and reclaim your lost identity!"_

_She fueled her anger into gripping her lightsaber, tensing her muscles; anywhere than where it wanted to be directed, towards the Jedi, towards the Council._

"_I'm not Revan anymore, Bastila. I don't even remember those days."_

"I don't need anything to remind me that I used to pretend Revan's not my name." She tried to stay calm, but her voice got ahead of her control and snapped viciously at him. "I don't need anything to remind me that you wish Revan wasn't my name either-"

"I need it!" Carth suddenly shouted. Katrina stared at him for a moment before tossing all of her carefully made piles into her bag and slinging it over her shoulder, turning to exit the room.

"No…wait, that's not what I meant," Carth pleaded, gripping her shoulders and holding her in place.

"_So... you did it? You turned against Revan once and for all? I knew she wasn't part of you anymore. I knew it." He almost sounded as though the words comforted him more than they were congratulating her._

"Look, if you want me to call you Revan, then I need something, anything, to remind me that you're not-"

"That I'm not really Revan?" Katrina shot back.

"No! That you're not like the Dark Lord, that…that Revan- I mean, that _you_ are a good person now. That you'd never turn back to the dark side, that you'd never do…any of the things you've done ever again."

"_It doesn't matter who's to blame," Carth snapped._

That's not fair, _Katrina thought desperately. _You're blaming me, it definitely matters who you think is to blame.

"_You're still the one who did it. You killed my wife... you betrayed everything that I believed in! You destroyed my life!"_

"I'm not trying to pretend you're not Revan anymore," Carth continued. "I'm not ignoring everything you've done- I can't. But you have to give me some leeway here, all right? I love you, but I still need to remind myself that you're more than just a name I used to blame the state of the galaxy on."

His hands rubbed her shoulders, thumbs wanting to creep up her neck, but content to wait for her permission.

"I think you could use a reminder every now and then too, beautiful. Otherwise that's a lot of guilt to be carrying."

He sounded tired, and she was glad that most of the guilt he had used to carry had been forgotten. Katrina held up his present between them, running her fingers over it.

"Made Dustil help you, eh?" she finally murmured.

Carth nodded. "He said he hopes it works, or else he's in for a rough month with you."

Katrina laughed, letting her bag slip off her shoulder and back onto the floor. "All right. You're off the hook. And for the record, you're still very bad with apologies."

"You're not going to make me work for it this time? No 'just one little kiss'?"

"You said no when I asked you on Tatooine-"

"I was an idiot on Tatooine," Carth interrupted, grasping her cheeks in his hands and kissing her. Katrina wrapped her arms around him.

"_You gave me a future. I want to give you a future, too...with me. I think I could love you, if you give me the chance."_

He didn't love a woman the Council had invented; he loved her. Otherwise he would have left her in search of that woman long ago.

"That actually wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be," he murmured in her ear. "I even had a whole holiday planned out."

"What was it?"

"'R' Day."

"What's the 'R' stand for?"

Carth shrugged. "'Redemption'. Or 'Revan'. Hell, it can stand for 'Rancor' if you really want."

"Romantic Republic pilot?"

He smirked.

"If you throw 'most handsome in the galaxy' somewhere in there, sure."

She suddenly remembered what it had been like to wake up on Taris and find that there was a very concerned and attractive man leaning over you introducing himself. She remembered how that same feeling had chased the man from Dantooine to Tatooine to Korriban and Manaan, and even into the depths of hell itself; how she couldn't think of the man without that same feeling, the feeling of her heart fluttering against her ribs and her usually eloquent tongue tied in a knot.

"Happy 'R' Day, Carth." His rough cheeks nuzzled her chin.

"Happy 'R' Day, Revan."


End file.
